What the heck? These are three little words you will say to yourself quite frequently while playing Square-Enix's latest title, Drakengard. While it has pretty simple gameplay and graphics, the story and themes of Drakengard seem to be it's biggest focus. It's not exactly a linear tale, but an amorphous glob of pain, revenge, and some of the most random freaky stuff you've ever seen.

As I stated before, the graphics of Drakengard are pretty 'simple'. Of course, this is really relative to the usual Square-Enix fare that generally sports the latest and greatest in console graphics. In comparison to these, the in-game graphics of Drakengard are excellent, but not particularly noteworthy. They do sport the usual high quality Square-Enix FMV's though. Even these, however, don't seem to stand out quite as much as they usually do. While the graphics themselves are merely good, the animation is top notch. It is really the aerial battles that stand out graphically, far more than the ground based missions. All of the diving, swooping, and flying makes for absolutely breathtaking battle sequences.

The sound and music are excellent, though a little strange at times. As Drakengard is primarily a game based around war and battle, most of the sounds are made up of things you'd hear during a fantasy battle, swords, screams, magic, 100 gallons of dragon fire burning a legion of men alive, you name it. Drakengard has all of these and they all sound great. There is also a good deal of voice acting in this game, and while the dialogue itself may make little sense at times, or feel out of place, the voice acting itself is always very good.

At the other end of the sound spectrum we have the music, and music seems to be something that had meticulous detail put into it for Drakengard. At times it's sweeping, theatrical, and majestic. At other times it's dissonant, strange, creepy, and unsettling. My only issue is that it is frequently not long enough. The same minute of notes will play over and over, and it's common for the looping to sound 'off' so that the music sounds like a broken record.

There are three main modes of play in Drakengard. You're either slaughtering armies on foot, slaughtering armies from the air on the back of a red dragon, or slaughtering hordes of aerial foes in the sky. The most common comparisons I've heard are Dynasty Warriors and Kessen for the ground missions, and Panzer Dragoon and Draken for the aerial missions, though I've never personally played any of those. The gameplay doesn't really change much during the game. For the most part you'll be slaughtering countless members of the Empire over, and over, and over again. It can become rather repetitive, but surprisingly I never really got bored with it.

Aside from the mindless killing spree, there are also a few minor RPG elements. You and your dragon can gain levels as you both kill more people. You can also collect a huge assortment of different weapons, 65 in all. Most of these didn't seem terribly useful to me though, and I tended to just stick with the swords. One of the most interesting parts of the weapons is that you level them up too. As a weapon levels up it becomes more powerful, raising its attack power, combo list, magic, etc. It's appearance might also change, and each weapon has its own written history which is unlocked piece by piece as you level it up.

For most of the missions, you have the ability of get on and off your dragon as you please. While it is certainly easier to kill the vast hordes with the dragon, they make sure to put in some situations that require you to go on foot. You can also unlock allies to help you in your quest (though you will likely acquire none during your first play through of the game). You get to choose which one to use before each battle and you can call upon each of them up to three times during a mission for their help.

Their main benefit is that each has a very powerful magic attack that you can use as much as you want. While Caim, the main character, also has magic attacks based on his current weapon, they are not as strong and are useless against certain red armored enemies which are immune to magic (magic includes your dragon's fire). They are not immune to your ally's magic however, and you can generally clear your way through the massive hoards pretty damn fast with an ally. Just as Caim's pact-beast is a red dragon, each of your allies has a pact beast. Unlike Caim's red dragon however you cannot 'control' the pact beast directly. Instead, their presence is felt in those powerful magic attacks I mentioned before.

Drakengard isn't a very hard game, for the most part. People have complained that the AI isn't sophisticated enough, but you're fighting armies here. It's the sheer numbers that you're going up against. I don't think this game would be much fun if the hundreds of guys you were fighting were very smart. Besides, once you get near the end of the game, some of these guys can get pretty nasty. If they land a particularly nasty combo, you can kiss a good chunk of your health goodbye.

Technically you can go into a defensive posture to block attacks, but you will frequently still sustain some damage, and more often then not, I would just get nailed anyway the second I stopped blocking. The more practical defensive measure is rolling. While you won't be doing too much rolling at the start of the game, you better believe you'll be diving around quite a bit by the end.

A lot of the real difficulty comes from some of the sky missions you will face near the end of the game. You'll start rolling a lot here too (a 'roll' while on the dragon is pretty much a quick strafe to the side). There are a couple of missions where you'll be strafing right and left pretty much non-stop just to stay alive.

As I said before, as fun as it is, Drakengard's gameplay only goes so deep. It's the story that will keep you playing, and oh what an interesting ride it is. For starters, the game has 5 distinct endings, and the "branches" are such that you can't possibly keep any sort of correct linear progression, except for possibly the first ending. While the endings themselves may make sense, the way things fit together won't always seem clear. The game raises many questions without answering most of them to any clear degree.

For example, whenever you follow a path that unlocks a new ally character, you can then watch an alternate version of a cutscene in which they now take part and open up a whole new path. The problem is, this cutscene always takes place before you ever got them, and the new path would technically make it so you never met them in the first place. If that doesn't make sense, don't worry about it. While you can't actually fit all of the events together nice and neat, you will keep a general idea of everything so it's no big deal. The point isn't really about continuity and making total sense. It tries to be an extremely dark story and succeeds.

Without giving too much away, the story begins pretty simply enough. There is a war going on between a confederation of countries known as the Union and the Empire. They are fighting over the main character's sister who is the fourth seal that keeps something called the seeds of resurrection locked away. Pretty standard stuff, right? Well the main character, Caim, is no prince charming. The Empire murdered his parents and he's hell-bent on revenge. There's no redemption for Caim, only murder and bloodlust. With a sister who's a goddess, a possessed little girl, and the most absurd final chapter twist ever conceived by man, Drakengard is an insane, though never dull, ride.

Ultimately though, as fun and twisted as it was I felt the last few endings were pretty unsatisfying. As amusing as number 5 was, it was still ending number one that seemed to close the game the best. Perhaps that was intentional; I don't know. I have heard that they even lightened it up a bit in the American translation. Apparently in the original there were some references to incest and pedophilia. These are all your heroes by the way. That should give you some indication of how nonlight-hearted this game is.

No review would be complete without a few nitpicky details, and here they are. Number one, it's too easy to toggle enemy health on and off. It's done by pressing the L3 button, and I always seemed to turn it off by accident 100 times a battle. Number two is a minor camera issue. During some of the aerial combat missions, the camera won't center correctly after you peek to the side and you have to kind of wiggle it to make it behave again. Not big issues, but there they are.

As repetitious as the gameplay is, I never got bored with Drakengard. If you think you can enjoy a darker story that doesn't answer all of the questions it raises (and there are many), it may be the game for you.